Hot Spot number 4

Students can find day care questions bewildering. This is a hot spot partly because there is so much research to look through.The specification says you can be asked about…The impact of different forms of day care on children’s social development, including the effects on aggression and peer relationsThis means that a question could arise on aggression, or on peer relations, or on social development (both)

A great plan is to learn two opposing studies on aggression and daycare…i.e. one that shows it increases aggression and one that shows it decreases it. Then do the same for peer relations.

This way you will be able to write a good 12 mark essay, if need be, on any area. If you get a question on social development you have a choice of 4!

However, to really add shine to your essay you can conclude by commenting on the problems of trying to reach a conclusion on whether day care is good or bad… and that is due to the number of variables involved. There are lots, so no two studies are the same...

Think about it, we know

• 1)There are cultural variations in attachment ( so studies would need to be from the same country).
• 2)That children differ in attachment style so will respond differently to day care… so there would need to be a similar number of each type of attachment for each study.
• 3)That age is important in the attachment process so the children would need to be the same ages to be compared
• 4)That the number of hours in daycare affects response ( Belsky and Rovine) so that would need to be taken into account

There is also the responsiveness of the mother, the home situation, the age at which the child started daycare etc….

So how can we possibly draw a conclusion if we are not comparing like with like? Is daycare a good idea? The jury is out…and likely to be for quite some time.